A privately owned lunar lander touched down on the moon with a drill, a drone and rovers for NASA and other customers Thursday but quickly ran into trouble and may have fallen over.

Intuitive Machines said it was uncertain whether its Athena lander was upright near the moon’s south pole — standing 4.7 meters tall — or lying sideways like its first spacecraft from a year ago. Controllers rushed to turn off some of the lander’s equipment to conserve power while trying to determine what went wrong.

It was the second moon landing this week by a Texas company under NASA’s commercial lunar delivery program. Sunday’s touchdown was a success.

The company’s newest Athena lander dropped out of lunar orbit as planned. The hourlong descent appeared to go well until the final approach, when the laser navigation system began acting up. It took a while for Mission Control to confirm touchdown.

“We’re on the surface,” reported mission director and Intuitive Machines co-founder Tim Crain. A few minutes later, he repeated, “It looks like we’re down. … We are working to evaluate exactly what our orientation is on the surface.”

Hours after the landing, Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus said there was conflicting data about how Athena landed and whether it was on its side. The lander was near the intended target site, but a sweep by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in the coming days will confirm its position and orientation, he said.

Launched last week, Athena was communicating with controllers more than 375,000 kilometers away and generating solar power, officials said. Mission managers worked to salvage the mission to see whether the drill could be turned on and the drone deployed to hop into a crater.

“Obviously, without knowing the exact orientation of the lander, it’s hard to say exactly what science we will and will not be able to do,” said NASA’s top science officer Nicky Fox.

Intuitive Machines last year put the U.S. back on the moon despite its lander tipping on its side. Last weekend, it was joined by another Texas company’s lander.

Firefly Aerospace on Sunday became the first to achieve complete success with its Blue Ghost lunar lander, on the northeastern edge of the near side of the moon. A vacuum already has collected lunar dirt for analysis, and a dust shield has shaken off the abrasive particles that cling to everything.

Intuitive Machines was aiming this time for a mountain plateau just 160 kilometers from the south pole. It reached the plateau, but the company was not sure how near it was to the precise targeted spot.

This week’s back-to-back moon landings are part of NASA’s commercial lunar delivery program meant to get the space agency’s experiments to the gray, dusty surface and jump-start business. The commercial landers are also seen as scouts for the astronauts who will follow later this decade under NASA’s Artemis program, the successor to Apollo.